


Dinner tomorrow

by dandylions



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 04:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6838240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandylions/pseuds/dandylions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josh, Donna, an invitation to dinner and its aftermath. Also known as the millionth time Josh Lyman had to be given the pubescent advice of using his words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dinner tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time I've ever posted anything anywhere so I'm nervous putting this up. I haven't really written anything like this in a long time and I hope it turned out okay. Josh and Donna belong to Aaron Sorkin ( which you can tell because Donna isn't the president and The West Wing actually has a coherent plot). I hope you, whoever you are reading West Wing fanfiction, like this and know that I am in the same boat with you.  
> This takes place in the AU where Donna never demands the talk and Hawaii never happens. Also Leo doesn't die because why not.

She’s sitting at the very edge of the bed doing up her ridiculous shoes and he’s watching her. It’s the end of their night together and he thinks she seems to be in an awful hurry to get out of his apartment for some reason, which is odd considering she had been the one who initiated this in this first place. But now looking at her hunched over and her hair glimmering in the low light of the room, trying to buckle up those heels you’d think she was getting out of a meeting with the House Republicans not a passionate tryst with her whatever the hell she considers him. He’s sitting up in bed, naked with the sheets drawn up to his waist and his arms behind his head and thinks that for sex that’s as good as it is with her (and dear lord, the sex is amazing. There has to be something said about the aphrodisiac properties of a decade’s worth of anticipation) he’s sure left wanting after she leaps out of the bed the minute she regains her breath. 

He thinks of the previous nights they’ve had together; there was the first amazing night on Election Day and the time after that. Then the one after the inauguration and the sundry other ones during the hellish grind of the first hundred days and a pattern begins to make itself visible. She’s always the one who leaves. She left him on Election Day and on inauguration and every other time they’ve done this. Come to think of it, he realizes that she always picks his place as the location for their rendezvous and now the reason is becoming clear. She wants an exit strategy. 

He stares at her as she put her coat back on and searches for her phone and he finds that he feels a little hurt. And a bit used if he’s being totally honest. Maybe he’s wrong. He has been before, especially where Donna is concerned. It can seem he can’t do anything right in this area of his life sometimes, but he thought with Donna he didn’t have anything to worry about. She had to know how he felt about her didn’t she? There was no possible way she could think this was anything less than everything Josh had to offer. 

He decides to test the waters “Hey, what do you think about getting dinner tomorrow?”

She looks up from her phone to give him a puzzled look “I didn’t know we had a meeting scheduled tomorrow. Isn’t tomorrow the Agriculture thing for you guys? I thought you were going to have your hands full.”

Ah, fuck.

“No, not a meeting I meant like…. You and me, we go and get dinner. Together.” 

She gives him a blank look and Josh begins reconsidering this entire endeavor. He has Donna Moss in his bed most days of the week, maybe he’s pushing his luck. He should count himself lucky to have what they do. It’ll hurt for a while, he supposes but he’ll get over it if it means that he gets Donna some of the time. He just hopes she disregards this as a nonsensical notion. Suddenly he’s quite eager for her to leave. 

“Why?”

“What?”  
“I meant that if we don’t have a meeting then I could just meet you here, no point in going out and then just coming back here.” She’s looking straight at him and then Josh finally figures it out, Donna has been with him for a decade now; she’s seen how he acts with women. What had Amy said all those years ago? He likes to hit and run. Donna knows all of this and Jesus, Toby was right she really is smarter than him because she figures that he could never do a relationship anyway and therefore never even gave him the option to freak out and ruin everything. He has to ask her, has to or he risks losing out on Donna and that is an overplayed game at this point in his life. 

“Oh, I just assumed that you’d want to, I don’t know, date?”  
“Date?”  
She has a wide eyed look on her face and for an instant Josh remembers why he thought she just was a farm girl from Wisconsin all those years ago.  
“You know the thing people do when they’re in a relationship?” it tumbles out of him with no provocation. He’s too busy smacking himself mentally that he doesn’t notice Donna going very still.  
“We’re in a relationship?”  
Josh risks a look, she’s sitting on the very edge of the mattress her hands folded in her lap looking like he knocked the wind the out of her.  
“Josh…. You want to have the talk?”

No, he doesn’t. The talk is the single worst thing the human consciousness has ever spawned. Except this is Donna and if the talk is what it takes to tell her that he doesn’t think what they have is a passing fancy then the talk it is.  
“I don’t know how much there is to talk about. I know how I feel about you, until tonight I thought we were on the same page.” 

She’s gives him that look of wide eyed Wisconsin befuddlement again. He’s known her too long to think that she’s actually confused by him, just puzzled. She tilts her head at him.  
“I thought we were too, Josh. I thought you didn’t want a relationship with me,” she doesn’t even sound sad rather she puts it out like a fact and he’s not sure what hurts more.  
“Donna, how could you not know?”

She looks up at it then. “Wait, didn’t you ask me when we started this if sex in a hotel room was ok but sex in your apartment wasn’t? And since when are you even interested in anything serious? I’ve known you for a decade Josh, you’ve had one serious relationship in that time and you basically ran from that too. I don’t understand how you can expect me to know that you’d want a relationship when you’ve never shown any interest in having one before. I’m not a mind reader, Josh. I didn’t realize that the man who never showed any interest in having anything other than a sexual relationship with me was actually interested in me!”

Even in the dark he can tell that her face is red and her eyes are flashing and she’s standing up now and even if Josh wasn’t a bit turned on right now he’d consider interrupting but he wants to hear what she’s thinking, wants to know her own reasoning.  
“So I’m supposed to have divined that you had a change of heart even though all this time you had no idea what I thought at all because you simply presumed that I wanted a relationship. Which makes me question whether you’re really asking me out or if you’re just complying with something you think I want, even though you never asked me!”  
She’s standing at the foot of the bed; chest heaving, her coat undone and her eyes flashing. She has that look on her face which tells him he really messed up this time and in the scheme of their history, that really means something. He stands up and puts on his boxers, he doesn’t really see a scenario tonight where they come off again. 

“Donna….” She holds up a hand before he can even finish. She won’t even meet his eyes at this point, just stares ahead.  
“What are we even doing here, Josh? We’ve been sleeping together for the past year and if you’re unhappy with me or if what you have with me isn’t good enough or if I’m not good enough then maybe we should just end it.”  
Fuck. Things sure escalate fast if you’re an asshole to the woman you’ve been in love with for the past decade. Now comes the hard part. Which has historically never ended well for Josh. Fuck. 

“Donna, you have to slow down, please. I’m not unhappy with what we have and it is good enough for me. If this is what you want then it’s enough for me, are you…. Are you kidding? I’d take Donna Moss any way I can get her. Donna,” and it’s the desperation in his voice that finally gets her to look up at him. Her eyes are shiny and they’re cutting through him. And fuck him, now he’s just another bastard in her life. He steps closer to her, he needs some form of reassurance that he hasn’t wrecked this already. 

“Donna, I’m in love with you,” her eyes widen a fraction more at that but he soldiers on “I just assumed that you knew….I mean, Donna, how could you not know? Not even during the campaign? Not even after Gaza?” She shakes her head. He decides that this isn’t the time to push her on this.  
“What I’m trying to say is…if this is what you want then this is what we’ll have. If you want the whole relationship thing where we celebrate every weekly anniversary then that’s good too. I just want you, Donna. Any way I can keep you around.”  
He stops, his hands on her shoulders. She’s still looking at him with watery eyes, but she doesn’t look angry anymore. She is very still and her breathing is quiet and he can practically see the wheels turning in her brain. She’s been quiet for her a good five minutes after Josh has delivered his soliloquy when he starts panicking. 

“I mean… I said all that…. If you don’t want to be with me…then that’s uh… that”  
She interrupts him with a kiss. It’s rough and urgent with her hands are braced against his chest and her body pressing against his. She pulls back before he even realizes what happened.  
“So, dinner tomorrow?”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this was ok. I've been going through an extraordinarily rough patch recently and this show has made it a bit better. I've never posted fanfiction before and the only reason I even wrote this is because there have been very few characters I love as much as I've come to love Donnatella Moss. So I hope this wasn't a disservice to her.


End file.
